The Hidden Palace (The Golem and the Jinni, #2)

by Helene Wecker

But the children of Little Syria noticed. They’d wake in the night, roused by a snoring parent or a restless sibling, and look out the window in time to spy the couple on a nearby rooftop. Or, they’d sit blanket-wrapped on the fire escape and overhear an argument conducted in the pair’s telltale blend of languages, which changed so quickly between Arabic, English, and Yiddish that the children were left to grasp at half sentences, formless bursts of rhetoric. They mean well, but . . . Their bizarre insistence upon . . . You give them too little . . . Who, the children wondered, were the they the pair spoke of? And who was she, the tall woman in the cloak, who could draw so many words from their silent Mister Ahmad? They would watch, and listen; and on morning walks to school they’d trade their information, and speculate about where the couple went every night, with suggestions ranging from the prosaic to the salacious.

She wrote, in response to a question asked in a goodreads ama several years anon…